All Them REZNs

 

Yet again my self-imposed blog assignment was made simpler by having two concerts I could comment upon, both occurring within the same week between the last blog entry and this one.  Here you go.

On Saturday, December 4, 2021, I attended a concert at the Baltimore Soundstage, of a Nashville, Tennessee band, All Them Witches (Bassist/singer Charles Michael Parks; guitarist Ben McLeod; drummer Robby Staebler).

This show had originally been scheduled in spring 2020 at the Ottobar (also in Baltimore), postponed several times due to COVID, and transferred to this venue.   My initial ticket was will call (as my preference is for non-electronic tickets) and the box office had my name on a list.  No problems there. 

Arriving at the venue was simple:  395 North up past the Pentagon, the GW Parkway to the Beltway, around to I-95 near College Park, then up I-95 to the Inner Harbor.  Right on Pratt, left on Gay, right on Water, and I was at the parking garage at 55 Market Street, next to the Power Plant, literally across the street from the venue.  Far too close to complain.  Final price paid upon leaving, $15.   Not bad.   My travel soundtrack northbound was Camel’s first album, which tacks on some live bonus tracks on the deluxe CD version. 

The band had a modest merch table, at which I purchased a yellow t-shirt.  Autographed drum heads for $250?  No thanks – the only non-apparel item of note.  Since most bands have merch available online, what we’re looking for is tour-specific items you won’t see on the website – so you check the website before the show.  Or – here’s looking at you, Blue Oyster Cult – a spectacularly unimaginative selection, with the “square image of most recent album cover on a black t-shirt” being the supreme cop-out.   We’re long past the days where we felt compelled to buy at least ONE shirt at the merch table, no matter how lame.  For a band which tours so diligently as BOC – it seems they’ll play any show, no matter how bizarre the venue (e.g. opening for a puppet show at a theme park) – has such an unimpressive array of merch, and the days of tour-specific shirts are long gone.  Fortunately the ATW yellow t-shirt as mentioned before qualified as a special item. 

L.A. Witch was the opening act: another all-girl stoner rock band, they sounded like a close copy of Portland’s Blackwater Holylight (which is supporting ATW on other dates on this tour, nowhere close to Baltimore).

My biggest issue was standing.  The venue is pretty much standing room only, which after awhile made my 1969 model year back hurt.  I stood up in the crowd for the first few songs in the set of ATW themselves, then found a remote corner out of the way to sit down.  By the end of the set I was OK to get up and walk around again.  The venue was full enough that getting anywhere close to the stage was impossible at the time I arrived (yet I’d done so for Monster Magnet and Texas Hippie Coalition in the past at this venue).  Oddly, falling asleep was NOT an issue here.  The encore included my favorite, “Blood And Sand/Milk and Endless Waters”.  Some of ATW’s material reminds me of the Allman Brothers Band at the Fillmore East, whereas this song evokes “Stranglehold” by Ted Nugent.  

Oh, I don’t expect the band to be 100% perfect, note-for-note.  If I wanted that I’d stay home and listen to the CDs, confident that a CD will play the same every time you play it.  Falling down drunk, botched solos, completely useless?  Well, that might be a problem, but I’ve yet to see a band perform that badly.  The two notable exceptions were Leslie West, i.e. Mountain (opening for Deep Purple, Paris 1985), and the only show I ever walked out on, the Mars Volta.  The latter I left because a band whose studio material was 50% prog and 50% screaming in your face nonstop appeared to limit their live set to the latter 50%, which even the band itself (!!!) has acknowledged is not what people want to see.  Then again, there’s another possibility, which transpired at the next concert – see below.

The audience was well behaved.  The most prominent non-ATW band represented was Clutch, as you might imagine in Baltimore.   Unlike a sporting event, which has two mutually antagonistic groups of fans varying from friendly rivalry to outright hostility, presumably everyone at a concert is rooting for the same “team”, and not about to heckle the band – aside from Flair-like “WOOO” of appreciation.  This crowd was enthusiastic without being boorish or unlikeable, a well behaved audience you can’t assume as a matter of course.  Overall an extremely pleasant experience. 

REZN. A few days later I saw this band, on December 8, 2021, at the DC9 Club in DC.  From Chicago, Illinois, and no array of rescheduled concerts. Guitarist/vocalist Rob McWilliams; bassist Phil Cangelosi; keyboardist/sax player Spencer Oulette; and drummer Patrick Dunn.  The sax adds a Nik Turner ingredient to the mix which works well.   

Logistically, this was a simpler concert, as DC is far closer to me in Bailey’s Crossroads than Baltimore:  just shoot up 395 and find my way close to the 930 Club.  Street parking was fine so long as I was willing to walk a few blocks north on Ninth Street.  The venue itself is one of these narrow slices of a city block so slim you walk right past it without even seeing it.  But at least this place, far smaller than the Baltimore Soundstage, had tables and stools to rest my weary back and ass during the generic stoner rock opening acts.  You like to believe that you’re seeing “the next big thing” when they’re an opening act in some tiny club, but somehow I doubt Slomo Sapiens (??) or Dirt Woman will make it big – they’re not even at the Richmond show the next evening.  Then again, both opening acts finished their short and modest sets without a problem.

Merch was sparse:  CDs, vinyl, patches I already had, and an underwhelming t-shirt less impressive than the ones I already had.  So make that ZERO purchases this time around. 

REZN are a band like Elder and Weedpecker who blend doom with prog in a nice blend which avoids being too oppressive or too mellow.  And I was happy, upon re-listening to their three albums, Let It Burn, Calm Black Water, and Chaotic Divine, that the most recent album was the best, showing the band is progressing rather than regressing.   I had seen them a few years back at the Sidebar in Baltimore, on the tour for the second album, so it was good to see them again.  Here I was able to get literally right up to the stage, the room being only about a third full.  Not quite “KISS in 1973 playing through fake speaker cabinets to ten people in the Popcorn Club in Queens”, but nowhere near capacity. 

I suppose after just under 300 concerts, you’re bound to see something different happen, and this was it. 

About halfway through the show, McWilliams wound up having his effects pedal board, something like 20 pedals, crap out on him.  A heroic attempt by him and Dunn to fix the problem failed, causing the show to be prematurely ended. The sad thing was that I was enjoying the set up until that point.  Hopefully they’ll fix the issue and come back to DC to finish what they started. 

Recently I posted a vid on Facebook about the famous Rickenbacker 4000/4001/4003 bass guitar.   I’m not a bassist and never have been, and probably never will be.  These basses are iconic and associated with Geddy Lee, Lemmy, Chris Squire, Cliff Burton, and many others.   A Facebook comrade noted that this particular bass is extremely difficult to maintain properly, notwithstanding its unique sound.  Professional musicians usually have a full-time tech who takes care of their instruments.  However, I didn’t see any roadies working for REZN and the band members set up their own instruments and equipment – and when something did go wrong, it was up to them to fix it.  I suggested going straight through the amp, to which Cangelosi noted that the guitar really needs all those effects.  In this case, going straight through the amp would be REZN’s equivalent of an acoustic show. Maybe bands need a “shit happens” boot camp, but I’m guessing that’s called “touring”. 

Better luck next time…. 

Texas Hippie Coalition

Back in high school in Paris in the early 80s, I discovered heavy metal.  AC/DC, Black Sabbath, Ozzy Osbourne, Metallica, Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, etc.   I’d also heard of this band called the Grateful Dead.

With a name like that, they had to be hardcore metal, right?  And all these album covers with skulls and roses, you know?  So I bought Reckoning, a double live acoustic album, and was …”HUH?”  A helpful friend, Sean C., observed that this material was in fact standard fare for the band and agreed to take this album off my hands.   Decades later, he still has the vinyl I gave him, and I replaced it with the CD version (with extra tracks).  Suffice to say that the Grateful Dead were not nearly as heavy as their name would imply.

Fast forward to 2018 and I found the opposite with regard to this band, Texas Hippie Coalition.  I suspect they wanted everyone to know they smoked weed and wanted a band name which fit tetrahydracannabinol (THC), which we all know is the active ingredient of marijuana and gives it the ability to make you stoned.  All well and fine, but while “Texas” and “coalition” don’t necessarily imply any particular type of music – except maybe ZZTop – “hippie” certainly implies the type of music hippies generally listen to, the #1 being…the Grateful Dead.   So with a name like that, the most obvious implication is that this is a jam band. 

Nope.  THC sound like Pantera mixed with Lynyrd Skynyrd.  They are definitely heavy and brutal.  Mind you, there is no law that says everyone who smokes MJ and listens to music has to listen to the same music.  Rappers love weed.  Deadheads love weed.  Floyd fans love weed.  And metal fans – particularly fans of so-called “stoner rock” (mostly highly influenced by Black Sabbath with about 25% Pink Floyd added in) – also love weed.  Not everyone, of course.  Plenty of us stoner rock fans are happy with a beer or two and don’t need a joint or bong to appreciate even songs like “Sweet Leaf”.  I enjoyed the THC show on Monday night with nothing more than a 16 oz Blue Moon consumed while the last opening act, Kobra and the Lotus, was playing.

Band Names.  While I’m on the topic…  THC is not the only band openly expressing its love for the weed.  Of course, Black Sabbath sang “Sweet Leaf”, pot leaves can be seen on the cover of Second Helping by Lynyrd Skynyrd, and of course many rappers like Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, and Cypress Hill are likewise open and notorious about their habits.  Many stoner rock bands make it a point to name themselves accordingly, such as Bongzilla, Weedeater, and my favorite (from Poland), Weedpecker.  The bands vary in how brazen they are about displaying the pot leaf – which itself is fairly distinctive and recognizable by now (and is NOT on Ohio State football helmets, by the way) – on their albums or t-shirts, Brant Bjork these days being the most so, competing with Wino in that regard.  This band’s pot leaf shirt is long sold out. 

As MJ legalization gains momentum I dare say we’ll see more of this.  Eventually I expect the straight edge crowd to follow suit to remind us that not everyone smokes weed.  (No, really?)  Anyhow.

Band. Their prior bassist, John Exall, left the band recently and was replaced by a left-handed guy un-named on the website and in the show, who did a remarkably good job of looking cool and getting the job done.  Whether he earned the right to remain in the band after the tour remains to be seen.  Drums are done by Timmy Braun, twin guitars by Nevada Romo and Cord Pool, and – last but not least - the vocals handled by the large, verbose and unmistakable “Big Dad Rich”, whose mike stand was a double-barreled shotgun.  Like AC/DC, this band has one member who vastly outshines the rest of the band, and BDR is definitely that guy.  In addition to his powerful singing voice and imposing stage presence by sheer mass alone, he loves to tell the audience about his prior career smuggling weed from Mexico and selling it in the US at a profit.

Discography.  Pride of Texas (2008), Rollin’ (2010), Peacemaker (2012), Ride On (2014), Dark Side of Black (2016).  Of these, I purchased the newest and listened to the prior albums on Spotify in reverse order.  Pride of Texas could be considered a de facto Pantera tribute album, released 8 years after Pantera themselves released their last album, Reinventing The Steel.  Mind you, THC made no secret of their love for Pantera, and as fellow Texas metalheads it’s hardly a surprise.   As the band developed the material gets a bit looser and groovier, leaving Pantera not far behind but at least no longer being a verbatim copy anymore.

The point of all this is because on Monday night, April 30, I caught the band live at the Baltimore Soundstage, a small club in downtown Baltimore just north of the Inner Harbor.  Of the three opening acts, I caught the last one, Kobra & the Lotus, essentially a heavy hair metal band with a leather-clad female singer who looks like Britney Spears as a Motley Crue fan. 

With time and money in finite supply, we can’t see every show we want, and usually we end up seeing bands we’ve seen already because we know we’ll enjoy the show.  But every now and then we see a band we’ve never seen before, like this one.  [I say “we” but in fact I saw the show alone.]

I got there a bit early, and before sundown, so I took the liberty of parking on the street and walking around.  Although I’d been to a few shows at the Soundstage before, at those times I arrived just in time for the show, already dark, and wasn’t able to relax and look around.  I briefly cruised through Buns & Nubile in the power plant building, complete with huge smokestacks – no longer active – rising up through the store and up through the roof.  I had dinner at Chipotle (not much different there).  I walked around the pier, which is parallel to where the Pier Six Pavilion is to the east.  I recalled a date back in September 2006 with an annoying Filipino woman – right here at this exact place.  Then once all the random and restless nonsense was out of my system and I calculated that the last opening act was due to go on, I returned to the venue and checked in.

Before a band goes on to play, particularly a headliner, the venue plays songs on the PA specially chosen by the band the prep the audience for the upcoming musical festivities.  These aren’t random songs.  Before Clutch went on at Terminal 5 in NYC in December 2015, a few days after Lemmy had died, they played Motorhead songs in tribute to the fallen Hawkwind bassist.  See next entry…

Clutch.  Oh, this is funny.  I was wearing my Clutch hoodie to the show.  Clutch are from Germantown, Maryland, and with KIX long off the radar, are probably the premiere rock band from Maryland at this time.  THC put the Clutch song “Spacegrass” on the PA before they took the stage.  This is the song that starts off slow and includes lyrics about “Galaxie 5 0 0” and “Jesus on the dashboard” (often deliberately misheard as “Jesus on the dance floor”).  You would think a Baltimore, Maryland crowd would react to Clutch – and this being one of their most popular songs and most commonly played live despite set lists changing every night - but I was the only one in the audience wearing Clutch gear and the only one who recognized the song, prompting a high five from the security guy at the side of the stage – the only other Clutch fan in this place.  Anyhow.

Live.   Big Dad sings.  Nevada and Cord play guitar.  Drummer drums, bassist basses, and Big Dad belts out the tunes and tells us about weed in Texas.  All highly entertaining and worth enjoying at least once in a lifetime.